Wednesday Reading Meme
Sep. 15th, 2021 08:50 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerWhat I’ve Just Finished Reading
A few weeks agotroisoiseaux mentioned reading Boris Pasternak’s I Remember: Sketch for an Autobiography, and of course upon hearing that it was full of tidbits about writers and artists that Pasternak knew, I just had to read it. The tidbits truly are tidbits; the book is, as it says, a sketch, and overall I just wanted more detail about everyone (particular Marina Tsvetaeva), but still it was fascinating to catch this glimpse of Russia before the Revolution.
I also finished E. M. Delafield’s The War-Workers, and boy, does Delafield have a lot of Feelings about women war workers and how women’s war work is SO important but also not MORE important than fulfilling women’s traditional sphere in the home, and also that work (particularly war work) should be done for the sake of the work itself and not for self-aggrandisement, which I don’t disagree with, but it feels uncomfortably gendered here.
This is one of Delafield’s earliest novels, which may account for the occasional clumsiness with which it hammers its themes. It already displays Delafield’s deft grasp of character, however. I particularly enjoyed Char Vivian’s devoted secretary Miss Delmege, who frequently drives her fellow workers mad with her superior airs and delicate sensibilities, like the evening that she retreats upstairs in genteel dismay when one of the girls brings her camisole into the parlor to mend: "Well," she said gently, "underwear in the sitting-room, you know!"
This is the sort of person who is MUCH more enjoyable in fiction than real life, but it’s a lot of fun to see her pretensions gently skewered.
Oh! And I also finished Mary Stewart’s This Rough Magic. What a good read. I am happy to inform you that our heroine is rescued from drowning by the dolphin she saved earlier in the book (actually I guess there is no proof it is the same dolphin… but it IS the same dolphin, come at me bro), in the very best tradition of a fairy tale heroine who helps an animal and later is helped in her turn.
What I’m Reading Now
I’ve begun Dinah Mulock Craik’s John Halifax, Gentleman, recommended byphilomytha as an extremely slashy Victorian novel. It’s narrated by the titular John Halifax’s bff Phineas Fletcher, and by the end of the very first chapter Phineas is making David & Jonathan comparisons, so this is absolute gold.
Also, I realized I could make the characters in one of my projects Golden Age mystery aficionados (only for the early Golden Age, though; the book is set in 1927), so I’ve dived into Agatha Christie with The Man in the Brown Suit. The book is narrated primarily by Anne Bedingfield, a recently orphaned girl who is determined to become an adventuress and/or a detective, rather like the heroines of her favorite action-adventure serial, in the style of The Perils of Pauline or The Hazards of Helen. I love her.
What I Plan to Read Next
This is not so much a “what I am reading next” as I’ve already read it, but I just HAVE to brag: yesterday I found a copy of Jill Paton Walsh’s Fireweed at Half-Price Books and now it is MINE, ALL MINE.
A few weeks ago
troisoiseaux mentioned reading Boris Pasternak’s I Remember: Sketch for an Autobiography, and of course upon hearing that it was full of tidbits about writers and artists that Pasternak knew, I just had to read it. The tidbits truly are tidbits; the book is, as it says, a sketch, and overall I just wanted more detail about everyone (particular Marina Tsvetaeva), but still it was fascinating to catch this glimpse of Russia before the Revolution. I also finished E. M. Delafield’s The War-Workers, and boy, does Delafield have a lot of Feelings about women war workers and how women’s war work is SO important but also not MORE important than fulfilling women’s traditional sphere in the home, and also that work (particularly war work) should be done for the sake of the work itself and not for self-aggrandisement, which I don’t disagree with, but it feels uncomfortably gendered here.
This is one of Delafield’s earliest novels, which may account for the occasional clumsiness with which it hammers its themes. It already displays Delafield’s deft grasp of character, however. I particularly enjoyed Char Vivian’s devoted secretary Miss Delmege, who frequently drives her fellow workers mad with her superior airs and delicate sensibilities, like the evening that she retreats upstairs in genteel dismay when one of the girls brings her camisole into the parlor to mend: "Well," she said gently, "underwear in the sitting-room, you know!"
This is the sort of person who is MUCH more enjoyable in fiction than real life, but it’s a lot of fun to see her pretensions gently skewered.
Oh! And I also finished Mary Stewart’s This Rough Magic. What a good read. I am happy to inform you that our heroine is rescued from drowning by the dolphin she saved earlier in the book (actually I guess there is no proof it is the same dolphin… but it IS the same dolphin, come at me bro), in the very best tradition of a fairy tale heroine who helps an animal and later is helped in her turn.
What I’m Reading Now
I’ve begun Dinah Mulock Craik’s John Halifax, Gentleman, recommended by
philomytha as an extremely slashy Victorian novel. It’s narrated by the titular John Halifax’s bff Phineas Fletcher, and by the end of the very first chapter Phineas is making David & Jonathan comparisons, so this is absolute gold. Also, I realized I could make the characters in one of my projects Golden Age mystery aficionados (only for the early Golden Age, though; the book is set in 1927), so I’ve dived into Agatha Christie with The Man in the Brown Suit. The book is narrated primarily by Anne Bedingfield, a recently orphaned girl who is determined to become an adventuress and/or a detective, rather like the heroines of her favorite action-adventure serial, in the style of The Perils of Pauline or The Hazards of Helen. I love her.
What I Plan to Read Next
This is not so much a “what I am reading next” as I’ve already read it, but I just HAVE to brag: yesterday I found a copy of Jill Paton Walsh’s Fireweed at Half-Price Books and now it is MINE, ALL MINE.
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Date: 2021-09-15 09:29 pm (UTC)There's a chapter where he's musing on his many literary contemporaries who committed suicide, on the agony of soul that drove them to it. and it's just so sad. More so in a way because he's so accepting of it - like he's gone beyond sadness to just, like, "This is life."